Price of Gold Fundamental Weekly Forecast – Higher Rates, Stronger Dollar Could Pressure Gold this Week

Gold futures plunged early in the week after a clerk entered a bad order and never recovered from the setback. Most of the market’s loss for the week occurred in about one minute of trading on Monday. The rest of the week, investors tried to make sense out of the market’s inability to rally in response to a sharply lower U.S. Dollar although rising global interest rates may have had a lot to do with this.

August Comex gold settled last week at $1242.30, down $14.10 or -1.12%.

The market opened the week steady before a fat-fingered trade clear apparently entered a bad order, driving price sharply lower. According to reports, gold volume jumped to 1.8 million ounces of gold in just a minute, an amount that’s bigger than the gold reserves in Finland.

Gold tried to recover from this “flash crash” but gains were limited after hawkish remarks from European Central Bank President Mario Draghi drove up German and U.S. interest rates.

Although the U.S. Dollar plunged when Draghi’s comments set off a huge rally by the Euro, gold price barely moved higher as rising interest rates offset demand for an asset that doesn’t pay interest or a dividend.

The dollar weakened throughout the week as other central bank officials made their own hawkish remarks about the direction of interest rates. These central banks include the Bank of England and the Bank of Canada.

Forecast

Last week’s price action highlights one of the major problems with gold this year:  the lack of volatility. Several times this year, gold speculators had a chance to take prices substantially higher with event-driven rallies, but each time, the rallies failed.

There are still a host of issues that could move gold higher like the Brexit negotiations, issues with the Trump administration, cyber-attacks and the tensions between the U.S. and North Korea. However, last week’s price action suggests that gold is going to have a hard time rallying in reaction to any of these events if global interest rates continue to rise.

Last week, the U.S. Dollar weakened against all major currencies even though FOMC Member Robert Harker and Fed Chair Janet Yellen continued to offer support for another rate hike by the Fed later this year. This is because Draghi’s remarks and the comments from the other central bankers forced investors in other currencies to adjust their positions to the strong possibility of future rate hikes.

This week, however, the focus will return to the Fed and the direction of the U.S. Dollar with the release of several key reports including ISM Manufacturing PMI, ISM Non-Manufacturing PMI, the Fed Meeting Minutes and the U.S. Non-Farm Payrolls report.

Gold could remain under pressure if the U.S. Dollar rises and the reports are strong enough to support a Fed rate hike later in the year.